She was just fifteen when she boarded the bus with a few friends for the ride home from school on a cloudy early March afternoon in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. As the ride went on, the bus became more crowded. Eventually, the bus driver told her and her friends they needed to move farther back to make room for a white passenger.
Her friends obliged. She refused.
Her civics teacher had spoken that day about the Constitution, rights, and heroism of people such as Harriet Tubman. She had soaked it all in. And it stirred something. “It’s my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it’s my constitutional right,” she responded to the driver.
But it was not an argument for that time and place. She was dragged out of the bus by two police officers and arrested.
“I was really afraid,” she said about being taken to the adult jail.
Her minister and parents bailed her out. Then she and her family stayed up all night in fear of what might happen.
But Claudette wasn’t ready to let it go. She wanted to fight. She was right — morally speaking for the time, and historically speaking for the outcome.
Yet civil rights leaders didn’t believe they were ready, and that she was the best person to build a movement around. So they waited, and nine months later, after Rosa Parks went through the same experience, the leaders believed the time was right to fight the injustice.
Perhaps they were right. After a lengthy, grueling boycott, change came to Montgomery. And though Rosa Parks is the one best remembered for being arrested for refusing to give up her seat, history never forgot the fifteen-year-old who endured the same. Today, we remember Claudette Colvin.
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Note
Read a snapshot biography of Civil Rights Movement leader, Bayard Rustin.
Sources
- “Before Rosa Parks, A Teenager Defied Segregation On An Alabama Bus.” All Things Considered, https://www.wnyc.org/story/before-rosa-parks-a-teenager-defied-segregation-on-an-alabama-bus/
- “Civil Rights – A Seat for Everyone.” Seashore Trolley Museum, https://trolleymuseum.org/exhibits-at-seashore/seat-everyone-mobile-bus-exhibit/
- “The Women Behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott.” By LA Johnson, Karen Grigsby Bates, Barrett Golding, Courtney Stein, Diba Mohtasham, Jess Kung. NPR, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2023/03/22/1161664788/the-women-behind-the-montgomery-bus-boycott
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